#Dale City

[jimjimenezzz]

i love you media that emphasizes mundanity. i love you media that says you still matter as a person even if you don't achieve something great. i love you media that says existing and being alive is enough. i love you "we might not remember your poems, but we'd remember you." i love you "i was no hero" "perhaps. but you are a brave man." i love "in another life i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you." i love you "but who's gonna watch the deer?" i love you the mundane as something to be loved for

[rotpeaches]

"Soph, if you go after Isabella...you got no idea how fuckin' powerful she is."

"Maybe you should have said that to Isabella before she went after me."

[yeet-me-out-tonight]

Sofia and Dale Lee, everybody

[mourningmaybells]

While Twin Peaks was wondering "who killed Laura Palmer?" I was wondering "who killed my self-confidence?". Was I really living as myself and outside my doubts, or was I still trapped in The Black Lodge?

[random-dragon-exe]

I swear, these two are suffering dental problems on opposite sides of the spectrum.

What is up with business men having unique sets of teeth? It's like a trend now.

Also when you think about it, I find it funny how their villainous stories can be traced back to a singular event with a child.

[chungledown-bimothy]

My bf is SO Dale Lee coded.

We were watching Unsleeping City, middle of the Hall of Heroes scene, and he notices that a squirrel had falllen asleep on a tree branch outside the window.

So now we've stopped watching so he can make coffee and sit on the patio to watch the squirrel for a while.

[subaquatic-skyscraper]

Stop I love him so much.

He is too good with his audience.

Kyle MacLachlan Reddit AMA happening now.

[thekingofwinterblog]

You know what the most annoying thing about the Twists regarding the Elves in Inquisition was?

That all the twists, if taken on their own, would make for a really good story.

The reveals about Solas backstory and how him and his fellow God Kings rose, became decadent, warred with each other and fell, setting the stage for their transformation into the Old Gods is frankly speaking, some of the best lore that Dragon Age ever had, and lines up really well with how the world is structured while explaining how the Old Gods came to be, how the elves fell, and so on.

That the tevinter imperium when it conquered the nation of Arlathan was not the great imperial state lead by mighty mages their descendants liked to think they were, but instead a bunch of weaklings that needed years and years to take on one, measly city-state that had utterly obliterated itself in civil war.

There is so much great stuff here.

So where did it all go wrong?

The answer, is of course execution.

Inquisition overall is a great game... But man did it drop the ball so hard with the Elves that it's pretty much hard to believe that they will be able to tell a nuanced story about them in Dread Wolf.

Everything from the companions, to the world itself as the game presents , to retcons regarding mages that's there, not to tell a story about the elves, but to try and make the Templar vs mage conflict grey.

Starting with the companions, we have a great example of coming so, so close to greatness... and then falling right on it's face.

The game has two Elf companions, solas and Sera... and the contrast between them really illustrates the big picture with how incapable Inquisition is with trying to tell a nuanced picture with the elves.

Solas as a character is perfect. Love him or hate him, he is a fully fleshed out character with very clear, defined, understandable motives that makes sense to him.

And most importantly of all, his way of viewing the world is WRONG. The game acknowledges that he is wrong.

The entire story of where dragon age 4 is heading, is all about how the Dread wolf, for all his knowledge and intelligence and genuine virtues, is at the end of the day, a monster, who is willing to see the world burn to restore the Elves magic and immortality.

He is a racist, he is bigoted, and ultimately misguided. Despite all his development with the inquisitor, he does not manage to grow enough as a person that he manages to abandon his genocidal goals. And the game does not pretend othervise.

That is what makes the story of Solas rise to become the big villain of the sequel great.

There is no disconnect between the story, the characters, or the way the game wants us to view solas.

Solas is far, far more bigoted and close-minded than any of the dalish he so despises, and the game ultimately does not pretend othervise.

Which brings us to the opposite end of the elf spectrum with Sera.

Sera is a very disliked character by a lot of people, but by dalish and elf players/fans more than most.

Just like Solas, she is bigoted, racist, and ultimately misguided in her hatred of her fellow elves, whether they be city elves, or Dalish, or ancient elves.

And that frankly, would not be a problem if the game acknowledged that fact. If her character arc was about it, and either how she could not overcome her own issues, or actually managed to grow beyond them, she could have been a great character.

The problem is the fact that the game is not willing to handle this fact head on. Its not willing to come out and portray Sera as just as bigoted against her own kind as Solas is, and to treat this as a flaw.

Instead the game treats her as if her biggest flaw is that she's annoying, and not the fact that in a game that is in many ways about setting up the rise of the dread wolf, she is just as bad as Solas, just from a different origin point.

Sera should have been a mirror to Solas, both from a story point, as well as a thematic one, but unfortunately she is not.

Hell, she doesn't really overcome her racism either. The closest she comes to doing so, is basically burning out on hating the dalish and other elves in trespasser, not admitting she was actually wrong to hate them so much in the first place.

The game does not treat Sera's disdain for other elves and their culture as a problem, and it does not give a dalish inquisitor the option to tell her to go fuck herself on the topic that you are given with Solas if you really desire to do so.

You are given the option of kicking her out of the inquisition, but not actually stand up for the dalish or even city elves the way the player could against Morrigan's flemeth raised cruelty in origins, anders and Fenris obsessions with, and hatred for templars/mages in da2, or solas ideals in inquisition.

And thats a problem that really illustrates the bigger issue with the way Inquisition took what could have been a great story about the Elves and the reveals about their anceators, and frankly ruined it.

The dalish and city elvea were very thouroughly fleshed in both Origins, Awakening and DA2.

However, city elves largely managed to avoid being utterly destroyed by the narrative the way the Dalish were, for the simple reason that outside briala, we don't get much if any interaction with them at all, making them essentially a non show foe the game for the most part. They don't get a city elf inquisitor, and so we have no point of view to look at them from a pc perspective.

They got off much better than the dalish though.

Starting off with the arguably single worst thing in all of DAI is the retcon that Dalish clans, if there is more than two mages in a clan, sends off the third one alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves. This goes against absolutely everything that has ever been established about the Dalish, and worst of all, wasn't even an addition meant to demonize the dalish, instead being an addition to handwave away the obvious fact that the Dalish had a much better system than the human circles when it came to magic... Which in turn was made irrelevant by the fact the Avvar was later shown to have a much better and more effective solution to the possession question anyway.

It was, in essence, a pointless retcon, that overall only made the dalish look bad, and has now opened the door for the idea that most dalish clans acts like this, and will be portrayed so in future games.

Its bad, but unfortunately it was only the start.

The game goes out of its way to portray absolutely every single person who critices the dalish as having a point, that they brought on their own downfalls, even as they are being the most imperialistic, racist assholes imaginable, while the dalish inquisitor can only offer a token of defence for his people, a far cry from way origins allowed you to handle the same situation wheter your main ethnicity was ferelden, mage, city elf, dalish, casteless or dwarven noble.

But nowhere is it worse than the way the game handles the fall of the dales.

Now the actual lore you learn about it, is not bad. At all. I know some complain that the reveals that ameridan(and presumably other elves) worshipped both the creators and the maker, as well as the fact that the dalish unfortunately did have a bad relationahip with the rest of the world, in particular orlais, is bad storytelling, but i firmly disagree.

No the problem is the execution.

Ameridan is not wrong when he says that The Dales should not have distanced itself from the rest of the world, especially not in the face of a blight... But the Dales of his era were in turn not wrong when they argued that the Orlesians were little better than the imperium, and they would be completely right.

This is not a grey issue, its a grey and black issue.

Orlais was, and still is an evil, expansionist empire with 99% of its population living as serfs, that can be raped and beaten at will, little better than slaves.

The dales were the morally right side of the exalted march on the dales. No amount of new lore we learned in inquisition has changed that fact. We simply get the details fleshed out a bit more to add context.

Orlais was going to invade and enslave the elves anyway, as they proved through their actions against all their other, very much fellow Adrastian neighbors.

The problem is that you are not allowed to express this kind of point of view and stick to it like steel.

The characters you meet having the bigoted opinion that the dales ultimately brought on their own fate is NOT a bad thing in and out of itself... the problem is that you are not allowed to challenge that opinion the way you could challenge Lelliana's view of the dalish in origins, or the way you could tell both Anders and fenris to go fuck themselves on their extremist opinions all through da2, and ending that fuck you by killing them in the endgame.

And thats a real shame, because just looking at characters like cassandra's character development through Inquisition, you could easily have made a really compelling narrative put of a dalish inquisitor who stuck by his or her principles, and actually challenged the people they met's racist views on the dalish the way you could in origins, just with a more fleshed out and(unfortunately something way too many people just cannot emote to a character withouth) an actual voice to raise those arguments with.

I do genuinely like Inquisition, and i think it's overall a much better game than DA2... but man did they drop the ball with the elves so hard.

I feel so sorry for anyone who really got invested in the elves as their favorites factions, and i honestly don't think the elves will be handled particularly well in Dread wolf, especially as the only Dalish we are likely to see fleshed out will be the villains fighting for Solas.

[fountainpenguin]

Hey, can we talk about how the Founder's Day party was meant to celebrate Dale putting his statue up there with his ancestors' and yet the trivia contest prize was still a hat, not boots or anything themed around him?

Big opportunity for Dale to veer tradition with his own branding because it's HIS party, but he stuck with the hats (which we know have been a prize since Guzman was 9 or 10).

You'd think he could've made money selling a load of boot merch in honor of himself, but for some reason... he was big on keeping the party themed around his family history, not himself. There aren't even Dale facts in the trivia contest.

Also, his command tent is his dad's giant face despite Doug not appearing in the whole series and possibly not being alive.

Something something, I am once again sus about this whole city - including Dale's house - having Doug's Hat themes despite Dale making it explicitly clear he loves boots more than anything in the world.

He doesn't change anything that reminds him of his dad, huh? These are Daddy's Traditions and Daddy's Decorations and we do not make waves against Daddy.

[fandomscraziness22]

I will never be over the scene when Sofia finds out that Dale is dead instead of leaving her. The absolute shock and grief Emily goes through as a player trying to work through the info Brennan is giving her is so cool and sad to watch!!! She’s played so many episodes of this game *knowing* that Dale left Sofia, and then everything she knows about that is flipped on its head. Just insane

[howlbear]

This being pre-Dale redemption is so incredibly painful to me specifically

[heytherecentaurs]

Sofia’s family makes me so angry. They’re so concerned about Dale not being from there, basically saying he’s not family. And like whose fault is that? Sofia married a man who loved her, and her family obviously didn’t welcome him. He wasn’t from there and they didn’t lift a figure to make him feel like he belonged. And there’s the racism. The “not from here” comment is more than not from Staten Island. Dale is an East Asian man, so the phrase takes on nastier xenophobic and racist subtext.

Absolutely fuck the Bicicletas. Especially Sofia’s dad, Tony. He didn’t lift a finger to accept Dale into the family and allowed Isabella to kill him. His daughter’s husband, the man that made Sofia happy and with whom she had built a life and Tony tossed Dale to the wolves. Truly a disgusting racist old misogynist. He treated his wife poorly. He betrayed his daughter without remorse. He’s complicit in Dale’s murder if not an outright accessory. He was playing gangster in some delusional machismo toxic masculine bullshit fantasy and he was willing to hurt anyone especially the women in his life and anyone he didn’t think belonged in service to it. What a coward. An absolute motherfucker.

[thelesbianluthor]

Dale Lee fighting the angels at every chance to give his wife Sofia tax advice and watch the deers with her is the sweetest most heartbreaking thing ever.

[disneytva]

When Kiff gets covered in Helen’s magic “Theme Song Takeover” potion, she finds herself transported across Disney Channel’s theme songs from Phineas & Ferb, Big City Greens, Kim Possible, Amphibia, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Hamster & Gretel, Gravity Falls, DuckTales and The Owl House!

[contrivedcoincidences6]

Going back through old TUC q&a on discord and found this gem:

Absolutely wild. I want to write this as a fic or something and also have a million more questions.

[sweetsmalldog]

I forgot how emotional Dale’s in person introduction makes me god. Emily’s visible confusion, the description, him explaining he’s dead and apologizing for dying

You’d half to be crazy to leave Sofie Bikes